


Power Outage

by ShuTodoroki



Category: Cars (Pixar Movies), Planes (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Board Games, Competition, Fluff, Gen, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Ice, Monopoly (Board Game), Power Outage, Scrabble, Slice of Life, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-22
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-12 14:41:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29636187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShuTodoroki/pseuds/ShuTodoroki
Summary: When the power goes out during a potent winter storm at night, no one is particularly thrilled by another casualty from their aging infrastructure. However, sometimes having the time to unplug and enjoy some board games allows the team to become closer than ever.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	Power Outage

The weather at Piston Peak was very fickle. One day, it could be sunny and the perfect weather to bask in the sun (like what Dipper liked to do), another it could be the worst dry thunderstorm ever where the lightning came every couple of seconds, and the team would have a lot of spot fires to deal with in the morning.

And that was only for summer; for the dead of winter, winter storms frequently came through because of the relatively high elevation, and it wasn’t uncommon for them to have a foot of snow on the ground. The team would have to work together to shovel it out of the way so that they could still operate. 

Winter was the most tempestuous season, which was not what one might expect, since wildfires weren’t usually an issue during that time. However, the Air Attack Base was old, and even though they now had new management, it would take time to winterize their base with their new budget.

The water pipes, for example, were built to withstand extreme heat, not cold. So every November when it started to get cold, the whole team worked together to wrap the exterior pipes to ensure that they wouldn’t freeze and eventually burst, if it got bad enough when they were below freezing.

However, they weren’t prepared for when this particular winter storm came through. Everyone was in their hangars to escape the bitter cold that had settled in early February, lucky enough to have space heaters to weather the storm.

It started off as a cold rain, which no one was concerned about; maybe even thankful for because rain meant no wildfires to fight. However, that cold rain started to turn into ice when it hit the frigid ground, and it built up on the power lines leading to the base. What didn’t help matters was that the sun was already going down, and there was nothing that they could do.

Then, the freezing rain turned into sleet, and the sound of the ice pellets hitting the roofs of the hangars permeated the night. Blade was considering what they could do to mitigate any effects from the winter weather while Nick somehow slept in their shared hangar by the space heater, and that’s when it happened.

A bright light lit up the night sky, and Blade soon realized that it was sparking from the power lines. However, by the time he had realized what had happened, the light outside his hangar turned off, along with the space heater and the runway lights. They had lost power. 

Blade quickly sprung into action, knowing what to do. With their aging infrastructure, they had lost power before during winter, but he didn’t know how long the power would be off. Considering that the power line would need to be repaired by the Park Service, it might take awhile. 

The first thing he did was wake up Nick, since he was the closest to him at the moment, and he’d need his partner’s help to wake everyone else up so they could ensure that they wouldn’t freeze to death tonight. He nudged Nick with a landing gear tire to wake him up. 

The Hughes stirred slowly, groaning as he opened his eyes slightly, looking at Blade drowsily as he let out a yawn. “…Blade? What time is it?” 

Blade glanced at the battery operated clock they had in the hangar. “9:00 at night. The power went out.”

Nick immediately knew what Blade was talking about, because the space heater wasn’t on and their hangar light wasn’t on either. “Ugh…alright. We gotta get everyone up?” He assumed, knowing the protocol from being at Piston Peak with Blade for years now.

Blade nodded. “Let’s go. The faster we can get the generator set up, the better off we’ll be.”

The two helicopters headed out of their hangar, their landing lights on to light their way, only to see Maru with the Smokejumpers, Cabbie, Windlifter, and Dipper. Apparently, Maru was quicker than Blade was in getting everyone together. Only Patch was missing. 

“Where’s Patch?” Blade asked sternly.

Almost as if on cue, Patch came down from the control tower, holding a flashlight in one of her tines. “With no power, there’s no point being up there. Can’t monitor any fire when the computers are down.” She said, joining the others.

Now that everyone was in one place in the frigid temperatures, with sleet hitting them, Blade could quickly get down to business so they wouldn't have to be outside longer than they had to. "Alright. Maru, the emergency generator is in the shed, right?" 

"Yeah, though there's only four sockets on it. It's only gonna be able to power the main hangar and three space heaters." Maru replied.

"Aw. So no team movie night in the main hangar as we warm up?" Dipper inquired. 

"Powering the TV is the least of our problems. Let's go get the generator and the gas cans!" Dynamite ordered, and the Smokejumpers promptly headed to the supply shed to fetch the generator, turning their lights on so they could see.

"Looks like we're all gonna sleep in the main hangar. At least until the Park Service comes to fix the power lines." Cabbie remarked.

"I'm sure that they _have_ to fix it when this whole storm blows over. The lodge probably doesn't have power either." Nick asserted before a particularly large sleet pellet hit him in the head. "Ow. We should head inside the main hangar." 

Blade nodded in agreement. "That'd be wise. The Smokejumpers will be back in no time." 

Maru turned on his built in light, and opened the main hangar doors so that the rest of the team could enter. It'd be a tight squeeze to sleep there for the night, but the main hangar was built to take the entire team. They could deal with it. 

"Alrighty!" Maru said as he perused the shelves in the main hangar, looking for extra space heaters and sleeping mats that they could use. They were lit enough for him to make out various things thanks to the combined power from everyone's lights, and he eventually found the supplies he needed. 

"Aha! Here they are. It's a good thing that we got everything we need in here. Might not be the most convenient, but hey. We've been through this before. Though it's been awhile!" 

"We shouldn't have to be used to something like this, but unfortunately Cad's influence is long lasting." Blade muttered. "I told the Park Service to give us a permanent generator in the main hangar that would be able to power the base, but you all know how that turned out." 

"Hey, it's alright! It could be worse. At least we have a generator." Dipper pointed out.

Dynamite opened the hangar doors with the generator in tow, leaving it outside with the exhaust facing away from the main hangar. "Alright, I hope we didn't weather getting hit by sleet for nothing. Where can we run the cords through?" 

"The little slot at the base of one of the hangar doors. That's what it's for." Maru said, driving over to point out the slot he was talking about. "But you have to plug in the cord to the socket on the outside to power the main hangar first." 

"I GOT IT!" Avalanche yelled, as he quickly plugged the generator into the outside socket, and Pinecone started the generator after Drip filled it up with gasoline. The lights of the main hangar soon lit up, and Blackout worked to get some space heaters hooked up and running. 

Some of the heat would escape from where the cords ran into the main hangar from outside, but it was better than having no heat whatsoever. The Smokejumpers quickly made it inside so Maru could shut the hangar doors to keep the heat in, but boredom soon came upon some members of the team. 

It had only been half an hour since the power went out, and Nick was the only one who really slept early. With full power, they usually had the TV to entertain them, but now they only had enough to power the lights and their sources of heat. 

"If only we could watch a movie over cans of oil…" Blackout complained.

"There are other things to do besides watching movies." Windlifter stated, having not spoken until now.

"Like what?" Drip inquired. "I'm bored…" 

"Well, I've never actually had the time to check what we have on these shelves over here." Maru realized, driving over to various boxes of Chrysler knows what on the shelves. He blew some dust off of a box as he opened it with his tines. "Hey! We have a few board games in here. Must've been ages since they've been used." 

"For you, maybe. Along with staying physically strong, one must be mentally strong as well. Chess is a strategic game that I enjoy." Windlifter revealed.

"I didn't know that you play chess, Windlifter!" Dipper exclaimed, to which there were murmurs of agreement from the rest of the team.

"Playing against yourself is the most invigorating way to strengthen the mind." Windlifter replied.

Maru rummaged around in the box some more before he held up the chess board, along with the accompanying chess pieces in a plastic bag. "Here's the chess board if anyone wants to play against Wind!"

"What else do we have in there? I didn't even know we had a chess board." Patch inquired.

"Hm…we got Monopoly, Scrabble, and playing cards. Wow, we spent our budget on this?" Maru questioned incredulously.

"This was probably before Cad. I don't see us spending money on board games when we could be upgrading our firefighting equipment." Cabbie speculated.

“I don’t either. Judging by how dusty they are, they probably pre date when I became chief.” Blade said.

“They must be really old then.” Nick joked as he chuckled, to which Blade shot him a glare. 

“I don’t think any of us are young anymore, Nick.” Cabbie chuckled as well. He was no plane to shy away from his age. Besides, you could always pull seniority when you needed it.

Maru squinted as he turned on his light again to look at the copyright year on the Monopoly box. “1980. Wow. Maybe when we have some spare budget, we should update our board games for the next power outage.”

Pinecone looked at the Monopoly box curiously. “The box looks fine though! Probably because we’ve never used it that much. Maybe now would be a good time to start, since we don’t have the comforts of power.”

Dynamite shook her head. She vaguely recalled that they had played it once, and it didn’t end well. “Not if you don’t want us to hate each other by the end of it.” 

“To be fair, it’s not like we haven’t argued before.” Maru said with an amused chuckle. “That leaves playing cards and Scrabble, from what I can find here.”

“Brushing up on some vocabulary while having fun sounds good.” Patch opined.

“But that’s a max of four players. How many tokens do we have for Monopoly?” Drip asked.

“We have ten, but I wouldn’t recommend playing with ten. Makes it hard to get a monopoly and we can’t play Monopoly until two in the morning.” Maru replied.

“How about we split it then? Six on Monopoly, four on Scrabble?” Dipper suggested.

“THAT’S ONLY TEN, THOUGH! WE HAVE TWELVE PEOPLE!” Avalanche pointed out.

“I’ll probably sit this one out. I’ll just watch the Smokejumpers get increasingly more competitive.” Cabbie said with a slight smirk.

“I’m with Cabbie. I can get _pretty_ competitive, and it’s nice to just be with y’all anyway.” Dipper agreed.

“Well, we got ten people! Who wants Scrabble, who wants Monopoly?” Maru inquired.

Dynamite shrugged. “I guess I’ll go with Monopoly, if the other jumpers agree to it. I just hope it doesn’t end with the board being thrown halfway across the hangar.”

“Don’t worry! It’s fake money anyway.” Pinecone reassured.

“I guess I’ll join Monopoly, since I have a pretty _rich_ vocabulary, though not in the kind that you could put down on the Scrabble board.” Maru said with a wink.

“Yeah, we know from the last time you dropped a wrench on one of your tires.” Blackout recalled, to laughter from the others.

Maru just shrugged and flashed a grin. “What can I say? So, that leaves Blade, Nick, Windlifter, and Patch on Scrabble.”

“Watch me draw three ‘I’s on my first turn.” Nick muttered, to which Blade just laughed. 

“I’m not that good at Scrabble either, so we’re in the same boat. It’ll be between Patch and Windlifter.”

* * *

Nick’s expression was knitted into a scowl as he looked at his horrible spread of 7 letters. “Blade, can you help me?”

“No.” Blade replied, not having good letters either while they waited for Windlifter to play. 

“But we’re pretty far behind Patch and Windlifter! If we team up, either of us might have a chance of winning.” Nick tried to persuade.

“Even if I did agree to help you, I wouldn’t be able to help you very much.” Blade had put down a pretty miserable “pool” off of Patch’s “group.”

Nick looked at his three “A”s, then back at Blade. “Actually, yeah. You’re probably right.”

Blade and Nick then proceeded to look on in shock as Windlifter put down the word “shampoo” off of Nick’s “boss,” which freed him of some of the “O”s that had been plaguing him and also gave him a lot of points because it fell on a triple word space.

“Wind, have you been looking in the bag before you draw tiles?” Patch asked, incredulous that Windlifter could put down such a good word when the rest of them seemed to be plagued with bad tiles.

Windlifter simply replied “No.” before looking at Nick expectantly for his turn. Nick sighed as he tried to think of a good word that he could put down with what he had, before he heard a commotion going on from the Monopoly group.

“Avalanche, you can’t just take money from the bank because you’re the banker!” Dynamite reproached.

“BUT I LANDED ON BOARDWALK AND CAN’T AFFORD MARU’S $1,400 RENT!”

“Then you’re out of the game, and someone else has to be the banker.” Maru said, a smirk on his face from his impending victory. 

Avalanche grumbled as he gave Maru all of the money that he had left, and Dynamite became the banker. It was soon a mad dash to acquire the properties Avalanche had lost, and Nick chuckled as he looked on at the sight. “Maybe having a power outage isn’t _that_ bad. We discovered board games we didn’t even know we had and we’re having fun.” 

Blade couldn’t help the slight smile that came upon his face. Nick was right; they had made light of the situation that they were in, and they were having fun, despite losing in Scrabble. Having a power outage, in his opinion, brought the team closer together.

“Yeah. You’re right.”


End file.
